Trials of the Wylfen Corsair - Paused
by Kaiimei
Summary: Layla was there the day Yggdrasil was due to be shut down. Clad in her Divine Class Armour as the world ended, she decided it was twelve years well-spent. Except...it didn't end. Instead, she found herself, with her armour still adorning her body, right in the middle of a desert. Well, I think it's time for a little fun! !ExtremelyAU !AsIn,NearlyNothingIsCanonicallyCorrectLevelAU


**Yep, I did it again.**

**...No, I'm not going to stop. 12 different story chapters currently in the pipe everyone ...Why aren't you all cheering? A-and what's with all the pitchforks?**

**I do not own Overlord, that's Murayama Kugane's schtick. However, I DO own Layla, Nox, Pest, Xan-nen, Kirema, the Amarok, Balosar, the Overorc, the Grand Larceny and its crew, plus a whole lot more. Hold onto yer lug nuts, it's time for an overhaul! AU is damn right.**

**_Chapter 1_**

* * *

The cacophonous sound of metal on metal made Layla cringe, drawing her from her idle musing to look towards the irritating source of the racket.

Two heavily-armoured brutes were currently having a brawl right in the centre of town, a knock-down-drag-out fight with nothing but their fists. Of course, they didn't think to take their armour off, including their rune-steel gauntlets, so each clash was also met with a crescendo of horrendous metal screeching noises. "Alright fucksticks, either take those fucking gauntlets off, fuck off somewhere else to fight, or find out why guilds run away when I put my fucking gloves on."

The two brawling men froze in place mid-punch to turn confused stares at Layla. She wasn't exactly cutting an imposing figure, twitching furry wolf ears atop her head with her white-wolf fur wrapped around her throat, stitched into the top lining of a segmented cuirass, made from what appeared as normal leather, but was actually the hide of a Terravore, a colossal creature with a hide tough enough to withstand up to Legendary-class attacks with ease. Divine-class weaponry was the only way to effectively pierce the deceptively thin hide of the beast. Around her legs was a set of lappets made from the same leather, forming a highly-manoeuvrable skirt of protection around her lower body. Her arms and legs themselves had no armour to speak of, though this was due to the slightly-strange way her armour worked, its protection extending even where there was no visible defence.

The part that threw most people off was the fact she was bare-foot. It looked pretty ridiculous but actually served a pretty good purpose in making people believe her to be less of a threat than she actually was. When somebody laid eyes upon her, the first thought was typically that she was a fresh player, with leather armour, no helmet, gloves, boots, and only daggers and flintlocks strapped onto her cuirass.

Of course, this meant that when they tried to steal her things, they got their teeth punched in quite handily. Layla wasn't even close to being a fresh character. Twelve years in the game, and people still underestimated her. Then again, to most people, despite her level, she honestly seemed like a pretty weak character. She was a demi-human, deciding against playing as a normal human or a Heteromorph, and looked decidedly normal...ignoring her ears and eyes that was. Her crimson-red eyes glowered out from beneath her raven-black hair as she glared at the two armoured brutes.

Thanks to her Job Levels in Corrupted Corsair and Reaper Soul, she didn't need to eat, drink, sleep, or any of the pesky things normal human-type characters required. Corrupted Corsair meant she had immunity to all poisons, diseases, or other insidious corruptions, just for passive abilities. Reaper Soul also had the handy ability to negate all mind control abilities, though the World-Class item 'Downfall of Castle and Country' could still break through her resistance to a degree. However, these were typical job classes, something anybody could do. She still seemed normal enough and weirdly un-equipped of anything really game-changing...until she pulled her gloves from her inventory and equipped them. The gloves looked like normal fingerless leather gloves, available to practically any adventurer, but they weren't.

The first thing the two men noticed was the visible aura of death that appeared around the woman. It was heavy like sea fog, and dark as oil, clinging to the air itself and cocooning the woman within with the cold embrace of death. Then, they noticed her hands twitching, as the gloves pulsed slightly. A line of crimson appeared from the holes in the gloves, the sign of a blood sacrifice which had just taken place. **"As I said...-"** Her voice was far deeper now, her eyes narrowing to dragon-like slits as she glared at the pair of brutes. **"-fuck off somewhere else, take your gauntlets off, or find out why guilds run away when I put these fucking gloves on."**

Needless to say, the two level-50ish men quickly scampered away into the teleportation gate available in the middle of town, running to another world to escape the angered woman. With a sigh, she tugged on her gloves, wincing as she felt the tactile feedback of small spikes being retracted from her hands. It wasn't pain, but it was definitely an uncomfortable feeling to have. Though, to see those two meatheads fleeing the area she was stood in was definitely worth the feeling.

"Oh, I was wondering why I felt an aura of death. Is that you Layla-san?" A rather polite and friendly voice spoke to her from behind. Whirling around with a frown on her lips, Layla was about to ask just who the hell snuck up on her, but instead caught sight of the red gleaming eyes sunk into a skeletal skull staring back at her. Changing her frown into a grin, she quickly nipped forwards to place an arm around the Undead Overlord, getting a panicked "Ahh, Layla-san?!"

Snickering, Layla released the flustered Undead. Honestly, for moments like those, she cursed the developers of Yggdrasil for not making Undead have proper facial reactions. If they did, she knew the man stood before her would be blushing quite brightly right now. "Hey there Momonga, how's it hanging? You getting in some casual playtime before the shutdown as well?" The man shook his head, a green embarrassed emote appearing over his shoulder. It sucked that undead faces really didn't have good reactions, but since there was no muscle or skin on his face to manipulate, and bone wasn't conducive to moving, emotes were the best the guild-master could do.

"Afraid not. I'm just going out to run a Demonic Incursion quest. The guild ran out of Cursed Eldritch Demon hearts, and we need them to keep a few things going, so I'm gonna go farm a bunch of them, enough to keep the place running until the servers close down. After this...I just have to log in every few days to pay the gold upkeep costs." Sighing, the skeleton rubbed his face. "I just...hope a few more guild-members will come. So many of them are busy with work, y'know?" Shrugging, Layla just grinned.

"Not really." And it was true. Layla didn't really need to worry about that at all, she lived in a different country to Momonga, and she was self-employed, with enough cash currently saved up that if she really wanted to, she could just straight-up stop doing her job for a full year, yet still have enough money to move countries. That was why she spent so much time in VRMMO's, or more specifically Yggdrasil, it gave her an outlet for her violence, a place to spend her money, and a great way to connect with friends.

Of course, said friends were usually by circumstance, like guilds hiring her as a mercenary to defend them, then inevitably trying to coax her into selling her gloves to them or joining their guilds. Some tried to take them by force, but they always found out the hard way that to attempt a theft of something like that, they'd need a lot more force, something only a guild like 2ch Alliance or Ainz Ooal Gown could really muster.

Not that those guilds even could muster that kinda force any more. Ever since the shutdown was announced, the number of serious guild players who showed up drastically declined, while everyone who had the game but never played it tried to get as much enjoyment from it as they could. Momonga was probably the only one in his guild currently online, so she felt pretty confident in leaving her gloves deactivated on her hands. Idly, she caressed the twin-gloves against each other.

Nox and Pest. Her own personal World-Item. Just as Momonga had, as he once told her over a few drinks even if he couldn't get drunk, his own World-Item (The gemstone languishing in his ribcage, which was still pulsating in a beautiful crimson, trying to coax her into stealing the beautiful gemstone), she had her own World-Item. Taken from the dead hands of the Drowned One, or at least, that was how the lore went. What actually happened was that while sailing around the Sundered Sea, she noticed a sickly green light under the water surface. Not recognising the area as somewhere marked by any map she'd found, she threw a scroll of rebreathing up and fizzled it into nothingness before diving straight into the water.

She didn't have to do that, since Corrupted Corsair meant she didn't have to breathe. However, this would mean she couldn't speak, and as such she used a scroll which would allow her to communicate with her crewmates, who dutifully followed her into the water at her call, throwing the incoming aquatic life into a panic as their forms sunk deep into the ocean.

What followed was a seven-hour-long raid of a dungeon which wasn't meant to be found. All she had for aid was her crew of Corrupted Corsairs, who, while strong against most oceanic threats when on the deck of a ship like a Kraken, or a school of Halifrond, they simply couldn't hold up to legions of Hydra spawnlings and Possessed Pale Riders. Using her magelock flintlocks, she twirled a deadly dance around the dangerous mobs, relying on her high agility and dexterity to carry her through the horde.

As she came across the final door, a slimy grey tentacle whipped out from between the slightly-ajar doors, latching onto her ankle and drawing her forcibly into the room, starting the fight off nastily by sundering her against a pillar before releasing her mid-swing, crashing her straight through a crystal chandelier as the water slowly halted her path. Fighting underwater was definitely exhilarating, something she rarely got to do, even out on the sea. Most opponents simply stayed on the deck of ships, or on islands, refusing to challenge her under the water. It was frustrating, but definitely smart.

The following battle was rather intense, with several moments occurring where Layla barely brushed past an attack which would surely have killed her, having to use what few spells she knew to cause explosions and implosions, dragging her through the water out of the way of attacks. In the end, she put the final minie ball into the head of the Drowned One, and as a reward, she got...nothing. There wasn't a drop. No chest appeared, no fanfare of victory, nothing. Of course, this made her feel rather cheated, but it was rather luckily sorted out swiftly as the administrators of the game noticed that the Dungeon had somehow been completed, despite not having been released yet.

Originally, the Boss was supposed to drop a cache of Celestial Uranium, one of the few ways to obtain the exorbitantly rare metal, alongside other typical drop items of armour, weaponry, etcetera. However, the Dungeon was still being made, and somehow was added to the game prematurely, leaving the developers stumped at why it was even there. Layla was still recompensed for the normal drop items the Dungeon was meant to grant her, but they were left scratching their heads at the diminutive woman's steadfast refusal to accept the claimant rights to the location.

Despite the fact that she was the one to complete the Dungeon, and with only the aid of level 90 NPC's no less, she refused to accept the Dungeon as her Guild Hall, since she didn't even have a proper guild. Corrupted Corsairs of Umbar wasn't a real guild, it was just how she controlled her vessel and her Corsairs. If she took the Dungeon, it would be marked as an official Guild Base, and then she'd have it raided, and it was all just a load of fuss, bother and itch, something she really didn't care for.

In response, the administrators, after much humming and hawing of course, deigned instead to rather than giving her the Dungeon as a base, give her Noxilous and Pestuous, which she renamed to Nox and Pest, just to make things easier on herself, as well as tentatively marking her Vessel, the Grand Larceny, as her Guild Hall. The two gloves she was allowed to dictate the design of, which was why they appeared so simply, though the developers did not allow her to decide their ability. If she wanted that, she'd have had to get her hands on Ouroboros, which would let her re-write what her gloves could do.

Considering the guild who owned it was one of those strong enough to actually scare her, she decided that she'd just accept the gloves how they were. And they were...perfect. When equipped, the gloves would stab spikes into her hands, through each Proximal Phalanx of her fingers as well as straight in the centre of her palm. They would then leech her blood and empower themselves, and by relation her own body, based on how much life-force she granted them.

For a fight against a single enemy level 100, she would sacrifice about 10% of her total life-force if she wanted to guarantee a win, her gloves being far more suited to singular combat. Against a guild like Three Burning Eyes, Seiyuu or Seraphim, about 20/25% would be enough to keep her out of their grasp. Against top-tier guilds like Ainz Ooal Gown, 2ch Alliance and World Searcher, 50% of her life-force would be required to give her a solid chance to fend them off.

Against Trinity, the strongest Yggdrasil Guild? She'd have to sacrifice practically her entire life-force to stand a realistic chance of evasion. Fortunately enough, none of the big guilds were very active during the latter years of Yggdrasil, so her obtaining of Nox and Pest went mostly unnoticed. Smaller guilds, of course, noticed said obtainment of a World-Item, and envy propelled them to attempt all manner of thievery. From the fact the gloves were still on her hands, they were all unsuccessful.

And even if those guilds took notice of Layla's item, they would have to rouse their members from inactivity and try to get them to work together to take her on. A small team of high-levels wouldn't work against such a combat-oriented World Item, so instead she would have to be taken down by sheer numbers, which only a few guilds really possessed any more, and those members were usually yearlings, people who only played Yggdrasil in the latter days, where the server population waned and the better players disappeared to greener pastures like Arkto's Gate or Identity, leaving Yggdrasil to decline.

"Well hey, good luck with your hunt I guess, I need to go find some Enscripted Wood anyway, the prow of Grand Larceny got scuffed up something fierce a few days ago and I keep putting off on repairing it." That was an interesting fight, a Kraken came right up to the ship while the cannons were being cycled and smashed a tentacle straight into the side of the prow, shattering the wood there but only damaging above the waterline.

Ships could definitely sink on Yggdrasil, her first few attempts at owning a ship attested to that, their rotting hulls, which were sunk to Davy Jones' Locker, long-since wiped from the game. However, the enemy AI for oceanic monsters and encounters was typically designed to attack above the waterline, only destroying the ship beneath the water if the players and NPC's aboard were hiding from it, which would force them to either defend the ship or allow it to sink.

This didn't stop lucky hits from occurring. Once, a Plague-wrought cannonball crashed straight into the hull, the enchanted ball of plague-born steel denting the hull fiercely. If it had penetrated the hull, it would have probably left the ship near-to-sunk before the hole could be patched, since it took a good minute for the crew to actually find the damage.

Granted, the water spouting in would have tipped them off, but it was still a seriously long amount of time to find something so potentially dangerous. They were just lucky that it hadn't penetrated since it would have flooded the cargo hold, and then flowed straight into the magazine and doused their powder, forcing them back to port. "Ahh, if you'd like, I happen to be carrying some right now." Momonga was kind in offering, but Layla shook her head.

"Nah, it's fine. Besides, I don't really have much to offer for a trade right now." She admitted with a shrug. It was true, she really hadn't much to offer the Undead. Being a part of a one-person guild, she didn't have the world-weighing stores of practically everything which Momonga no doubt had available to him, owing to the fact that he was the Guild Master. Certainly, she had plenty of loot owing to her twelve years of experience, which included transferring the items from old characters into the inventory of hew newest, but not as much as a 41-person guild could throw together.

Scratching his chin thoughtfully, the skeleton snapped his bony fingers. "Then how about your time? I could do with some company." Chuckling, Layla gave the skeletal face a once-over before shrugging and agreeing casually. She didn't really have much better to do after all. The repairs for Grand Larceny could wait. After all, it wasn't like the ship was going anywhere.

Her Corsairs wouldn't be happy being delayed, but they were just NPC's.

* * *

With a yawn, the empty flintlock in her hand found its way back into her holster by virtue of being dropped unceremoniously into the air, the air around her coated it in a thick smog of powder smoke from her repeated firing.

Her magelock weaponry was one of the few pieces of magic or magical equipment she regularly used, the convenience of the weapons far outweighing the downsides to using them. Sure, they had lower damage than regular weaponry, but they couldn't be stolen, they reloaded themselves, or rather they were destroyed when dropped and fresh ones appeared already loaded, after taking the shot and powder from her inventory of course, and they were still plenty damaging when they were wielded by a maximum-level Gunslinger.

Corrupted Corsair and Reaper Soul were her Jobs, sure, but her actual class remained firmly in Powderslinger, which split in two separate directions. You had the more standardized route, where you got rifles, shotguns, pistols, snipers, and more. Then, you had the specialist route. Specialists were, well, specialized. They selected up to three different categories and levelled those, to the detriment of all others. She could still equip a Plagueclaw Hellreaver shotgun and use it, but she'd suck compared to a standardized gun-user, or worse, a shotgunner specialist.

The more specific the specialization, the better the buffs. To this end, Layla selected Flintlocks, Cannons and Blunderbusses. Corrupted Corsair then synergized with this owing to its naval roots and granted her even more damage with her chosen weaponry. Reaper Soul didn't grant her bonuses to her guns, but what it did do was make her daggers far more effective, granting them a Soul Trap ability. Since Corrupted Corsair also had melee combat for boarding ships, her dagger-usage was buffed by the corruption debuff her blades inflicted, as well as the straight-up increase to alpha damage.

Of course, cannons were only useful out on the ocean or in defensive positions like Guild Halls and Forts, but having such a specific buff, at max level, meant that nothing short of a Legendary Iron-clad Ship-of-the-Line captained by a named NPC, or a monster on the level of a Craterspawn Kraken could survive a direct shot from her when she fired her cannon using all her buffs.

Stepping to the side to avoid the tiny Fell-spawn Imp which leapt at her, its trident burning with green fire as it chittered angrily at her whilst recovering from the cooldown of its leaping attack, Layla sighed. With contemptible ease Layla dashed forwards with the most basic of abilities, Charge!, and plowed her bare hand into the Imp, wiping out its health in one blow and destroying the foul beast.

Normally enemies would recognize the absolutely colossal difference in levels and ignore or outright flee, but Fell creatures no longer had instincts to fall back upon, only being driven by hatred and corruption. Or at least, that was how the lore went. In reality, the devs forgot to give the Fell Imps of Drakenfall Chasm the correct reaction, and they decided that they'd keep it around, even if the level 10 creatures had no chance against her. It irritated a few people who used the Chasm as a through-pass to get to the Frostfang Mountains and the Dungeons within, but they weren't listened to.

Abruptly spinning on the heel of her foot, she cracked her foot against another Imp with a visceral crunch, a grin on her face as she sent the little monster flying into a score of incoming abominations. "Strike!" She cheered as the Imps fell over each other trying to avoid the oncoming ball of green hell-fire, sending them all sprawling to the floor. Snatching her blunderbuss from Hammerspace, she fired the weapon at the clumped-up group, the shot loaded being a single enchanted ball of corrupted steel. The ensuing green explosion of gore was pretty epic, as the ball impacted an Imp, and detonated into a thousand shards of steel.

The more malicious purpose of those shards was that if a single one found its way into an opponent, they'd suffer a corruption debuff, draining their health, stamina and mana proportionate to a few things, most notably the craftsmanship of weapon and shot used, the skills and levels of the one firing as well as the one hit, then a few other things on top of that.

Imps, being level 10, had no resistances, so the corruption would claim their un-life in moments...even if it didn't matter anyway, as every one of them hit by a shard died instantly thanks to the simple fact that they had such little health. The alpha damage of being hit by a shrapnel projectile from such a high-level weapon, with acceptable quality ammunition being fired by a max-level Powderslinger, was enough to insta-kill the little Fell creatures.

"Come and 'ave a go if ya think yer 'ard enough!" Layla jeered, hopping to the side before swiping her foot harshly into the stomach of another Imp. It was definitely a cathartic experience going absolutely nuts against enemies who were no threat. Quite literally no threat, as High-Tiered Physical Nullification, a skill given to all characters over level 90, meant that the imps literally did no damage. But, her fun was interrupted when her HUD appeared, informing her that only a single hour remained before the servers were to shut down.

Disappointed that she wasn't going to have longer within Drakenfall, Layla drew her flintlocks from her cuirass, jogging away from the cracks where the Imps spawned and climbed out from, shooting any who got in her way. She had a single hour, and it'd take at least a half-hour to get from Drakenfall to Nozla Cove, where Grand Larceny was anchored.

With a sigh, Layla shot another Imp, hopping onto a rock and plotting the fastest way through the area.

* * *

"Welcome aboard cap'n!"

The fixed voice-line of the first-mate greeted Layla as she boarded her ship. It sucked that she couldn't make her crew sing shanties or actually remark in stuff happening. Yggdrasil had some level of customization in terms of the player-made NPCs, but that was for people far more confident in the creation kit. She merely relied on using online tutorials to add extremely basic voice-lines, ripping those audio files directly from other games to use in Yggdrasil.

Since those lines were saved on her own rig, nobody else would hear them, but it was still sweet being greeted and dismissed every time she embarked or disembarked. With a wave to the dark elf stood beside the ship's wheel, she took a deep breath. "ALL HANDS TO STATIONS! GET US UNDERWAY! We don't want to be idler in the offing now do we?"

The crew didn't say anything, but it always felt nice to yell out her commands. The only part they actually responded to was to get them underway, and considering she now had about 25 minutes until the restart, she was...never going to get the chance to add those features. That hit her surprisingly hard, the knowledge that in less than a half-turn twelve years of gaming was going to just...vanish into thin air, like it never existed.

"Come on you ponces, get that rigging to bear up, we want more speed!" The commands were honestly kind of like a rudimentary syntax. Mentioning Rigging, then Bear Up, meant they'd align the rigging so the sails were turned into the wind, giving them more speed. Getting it to actually work was the big issue, but it was considerably easier than trying to actually customize the crew, since the AI were already made for sailing, they would just do it in a really crude way, getting barely 50% efficiency out of the ship. With the custom commands, she had hers sailing pretty much perfectly, though she had to spend practically a month trying to copy code from a dozen videos. There were still a few problems, like the fact that more than once a corsair managed to get themselves stuck somehow down below the decks. Once, she even found one clipping into the floor of the hull.

Yggdrasil wasn't made with Naval content in mind, and it really showed sometimes, but it was still a damned fun way to spend the time. Time.

Ten minutes.

Ten minutes until the Corsairs that were in a flurry around her manning the ship would cease to exist forever. Ten measly minutes, a whole 600 seconds. Looking over her shoulder at the tiny figure of her first-mate stood behind her, arms folded as he gazed out over the crew with blank eyes, she frowned. Every time she told herself she would add more custom commands, shanties, and so many other features, she got side-tracked, or decided to simply do it next time. And now...she'd never get the chance.

Sure, all her crew had a backstory of some kind. Most were two to three paragraphs of fluff, but some of her favorites were detailed. Like Ansash, a random Plague-fester who saved her from getting smacked in the face by a Kraken tentacle, at the cost of its arm. Sure, it could have re-grown the arm, but she liked the idea of a one-armed crew-member who saved her life, and so wrote that into the creatures story and used a few data crystals to permanently remove the arm of the monster.

She even wrote a detailed story about her first-mate Kris. Saved from Elhoa Prison by Layla, the goblin didn't really have any plans for his life, since he got ditched by the crew he was running with, the reason he was stuck in prison. On a whim, Layla brought him with her, and slowly the old goblin rekindled the fire in his heart for mischief and mayhem. Many a drunken and debaucherous night was spent by the pair in ports all across the nine worlds, wreaking havoc.

Or at least, that was the lore. Sure, she went around the different ports with him set to follow, and filled his inventory with alcohol, which the NPC would use occasionally, but she was the only one getting 'wasted'. She wasn't even getting actually drunk, since the game was not legally allowed to inebriate people like that, even virtually. The potential for abuse was just far too high for any chance of it being legal.

Sighing deeply, she leaned back against the mizzenmast, digging a hand into her inventory. Twelve years of items sat gathering dust, from her first ever gear set, transferred over from her original Heteromorphic assassin, all the way to the Legendary-class set of equipment all of her Corsairs were equipped with. Mixed in were thousands of miscellaneous items like old reagents, potions, scrolls, tomes, tablets, traps, and other such tomfoolery. Finding the item she was searching for, she drew the brown leather pirate hat from her inventory and slapped it atop her head. It didn't do anything special, it just looked cool.

An item drop from a level 5 pirate thug, which were common around low-level ports, it gave a tiny amount of armour, or at least tiny proportionate to what her chestpiece and skirt gave her. Tilting it slightly to make it sit correctly, she hopped up onto the taffrail on the side of the ship, clutching a rope in one hand as she swung out to look across the deep blue ocean. Turning back, the land was a distant memory now, only barely visible above the horizon and disappearing fast.

Flicking her gaze up to the corner of her vision, she saw the timer ticking.

**00:00:10 Seconds Remaining.**

Hanging from the side of her ship, she looked over the heads of all her corsairs. Dark Elves, Goblins, Halifrond, Krakespawn, even a few Fell Demons. Her crew wasn't one to be limited by things like what race they were.

**00:00:08 Seconds Remaining.**

Each and every one of her crew had a story. Sure, some shared stories, like how seven of them came into her service at once and as such had near-identical stories, but that didn't matter. Hearing the roar of a Kraken, she looked out over the water, where one of the great beasts was breaking the surface nary a hundred feet from the Starboard side of Grand Larceny.

**00:00:04 Seconds Remaining.**

Flailing tentacles snapped outwards towards the ship, battering the top of the vessel as the crew automatically moved to combat stations.

**00:00:03 Seconds Remaining.**

Not that it really mattered. In a few moments, it was all going to disappear.

**00:00:01 Second Remaining.**

Spotting a tentacle swinging wide, targetting her, she leapt out from the railing, her hands wide as she closed her eyes.

* * *

Blinking her eyes open, Layla took a moment to gain her bearings.

She...wasn't in her room. She could feel the beating heat of the sun blaring down on the backs of her legs, arms and neck, and her face was pressed smushed into something granulated. Pressing her hands down, she raised herself and swiped a hand into her face, clearing it of the damp substance with a groan before cautiously opening her eyes. Her first assumption, when she felt the material beneath her, was that she had washed ashore, but that clearly wasn't the case.

While she was, indeed, atop sand, there was no water in sight, aside from the droplets falling from her body. A moment ago, she'd leapt from the taffrail of her vessel, and now...now she was seemingly in the middle of a desert. Evidently the restart got pushed back, though why she was now seemingly miles from her previous location wasn't very clear. Perhaps the map got updated and her location was over-ridden, but since she wasn't on her vessel she remained in the same relative location while her ship was placed somewhere safe and in water?

Deciding to not bother theorizing, she swiped her hand down to open the menu, deciding that looking for a forum to tell her what happened was better than being sat in the roasting-hot desert coming up with theories about what happened. Only, when she moved her hand down to open her menu, nothing happened. Blinking, she tried again. Still nothing.

Frowning, she swirled her hand around to open her inventory, and the system that appeared, while familiar in some ways, was...different. Rather than simply being boxes listing her items within her various bags, instead it had updated to be more user-friendly and customizable. She could see options to filter items like potions, resources, equipment, and other ways to organize.

With a hum, she closed her inventory and attempted to log out again. When it failed just as the other two tries did, she tapped her foot against the sand and folded her arms over. She was evidently still in the game, owing to the fact her inventory opened and she recognized several of the items within. But her options menu, which contained the log out button, refused to open. Lifting the pirate hat off her head, she slung it into her inventory thoughtlessly and hummed.

Tapping her chin, she attempted to open her chat window next, which also refused to respond. Scratching the top of her head, Layla brushed her hand against her furry ears and froze. She could...feel them. Not the weirdly-displaced feeling she felt when she used to touch her ears. They actually registered her touch. Pressing her fingers against the fur tufts in the centre of the ears, she gently brushed the fur and suppressed a shiver.

It felt good, really good. Too good. Suspicious now, she pressed her fingers down against her wrist, the slightly-sharpened nails of her fingers strong enough to pierce her high-level skin. It was...painful. Not the muted-discomfort of pain which was the damage indication system. She actually felt like she'd dug her nails into her own skin. With a shiver of panic, she wrenched her hand away, the sensation of real pain rippling through her body as she stared at the tiny cuts she'd made in her own arm.

Sat there amongst the sand dunes, staring as faint crimson lines dribbled from the cuts on her arm, Layla let her mind reel. Absently, she noted that she was in the throes of a panic attack. At the same time, she noted that she felt...weird. Not just in that she could, now that she was conscious of the difference, control the ears on her head. She felt as though...as though she wasn't quite...correct.

It was hard to put into words, but it was almost as if some part of her wasn't quite as attached as it should have been. Like something was...bro...ken. "FUCK!" She screamed out, punching the sand with her bare fist. "FUCK! FUCK! FUUUUCK!" She punctuated each word with another punch, her mind reeling. Reaper Souls were contracted to the fucking Shinigami. As in, the Japanese fucking death god. In the lore, that was signed by using a piece of their goddamn souls. Literally, the ritual to become a Reaper Soul meant using magic to pull a piece of your 'soul' and write your name onto the tome.

If that was true, it meant she now quite literally had a piece of her soul signed away to a god of fucking death. Corrupted Corsair wasn't anything nearly as bad, it basically meant she spent a lot of time around Fell energy, she corrupted all her blades, knew good few spells, she was good on boats, as well as a bunch of other bits and pieces of lore. Powderslinger was even more basic, she used guns, nothing much to it in that regard. But Reaper Soul..."Fuck." She muttered, her unblemished fist tapping the ground again.

With a long, drawn-out inhale, Layla slumped back onto her ass, rolling herself back to lay down and press her head against the ground, closing her eyes. "Okay, let's...calm down." She murmured to herself. "So, I'm-" Pinching herself again, harshly enough to open a new cut, she winced. "-definitely awake, so this isn't a creepy-ass fever dream. I can't do anything but open my inventory." Pushing her hand out above herself, she parted her lips, running through the recitation for one of her few spells across her mind. "Eldritch Warp, manifest your malevolent energies unto this impure world and sunder my enemies. Fell Storm."

Taking the form of a crack of sickly-green and pulsating corruption, the skies above the desert parted to allow a corrosive stream of foul energy to pour forth through the rent in reality, corrupting the sand it touched and twisting it into a maelstrom of chaos. From naught but sand spires of gleaming black rock rose, pulsing with dark-green veins of Fell corruption. Pools of sickly ichor sprouted from the ground, hands emerging to grasp at the thin air before receding beneath the foul liquid with groans and growls.

Fell Storm. An area-of-effect spell which corrupted a region for a set period of time, slowing and damaging anything which was not the caster of directly affiliated with said caster. Her level gave it strength and durability, so this specific AoE would usually remain for five minutes, and would cause enough damage to be lethal to anything up to the average level 85 character in those five minutes. Since she wasn't a magic caster, she had to use an incantation to get the full-powered version, but it was worth it. The extra seconds twisted the spell into a far more dangerous spell than the one she'd get for just saying Fell Storm.

"Scratch that. My spells still work." She noted, crossing her legs and observing the area she was now contained safely within. It was weird, the rocks surrounding her, rather than jutting out at random as the spell normally would, they instead seemed to almost cocoon Layla, wrapped around her but at a comfortable distance, with only a few small entrances between pillars. "And...are different."

Rocking to her feet, she padded over to the rock wall, laying her hand on it and closing her eyes. She could almost feel the energy running within the stone. She could even feel it draining slightly, as her spell was breaking a fundamental law of the World. According to lore, Fell energy brought into Yggdrasil by people like her was never meant for their Universe, and so the influence of the World Tree forced said energy back to its original realm after a long enough period.

Though, at the rate she could feel it draining, it felt like it could last...weeks. Months maybe. Flexing her arm out, she summoned a normal flintlock from nothingness and fired it. The far louder gunshot made her wince, her new hearing being paired with the fact that the gunshot wasn't tempered by the game any longer and causing a loud ringing in her ears.

Grimacing, she dropped the weapon, watching it fall and fizzle into nothing an inch above the floor. Plucking out another weapon, she tossed it about for a few moments, humming to herself. If she wanted to use her ranged weaponry, she was going to either have to deal with potentially becoming deaf, or find some way to protect her hearing. Tapping her chin, she considered the weapon again.

Taking out a single shoddy-quality data crystal from her inventory, she began by pressing her thumb against it before pushing the sharp end of the glowing object into the flintlock then watching the weapon absorb the item. A familiar window popped out from the weapon, leading Layla to breathe a sigh of relief. If that data crystal didn't work, she was going to be in for a hell of an irritating time.

Clicking through several menus of information, she found the one she was looking for, audio. Since her crystal was only shoddy-tier, she couldn't do a lot, but since sound wasn't too important for most weapons, turning to down to a bearable level could be done with only two more crystals of the same value. Taking the second and third from her inventory, she tossed them both against the flintlock and pressed the big green modify button.

Disappearing for a moment, the familiar weapon then re-emerged from her inventory, still visibly the same. With trepidation, she extended her arm out and pulled on the trigger. The gunshot was now at a much reduced level, to the point she didn't get any kind of ringing in her ears after firing. It still hurt a tiny amount to listen to, but not to the point of being seriously detrimental as before. More importantly, the weapon still blasted a hole into the stone she aimed at, so it wasn't notably weakened by the modification.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Layla let the weapon fall back into nothingness. With a groan, she stretched her limbs to their limits before rocking to her feet and taking another look around. By then the Fell Storm should have disappeared, so whatever changed meant that her spells were...weird. Shrugging her confusion off, Layla compartmentalized. Her first step was to find somewhere safe. It didn't need to have any food or water nearby, since she had plenty in her inventory.

Corrupted Corsair was meant to stop her from getting hungry or thirsty, but from the pangs in her stomach, she knew she could rightly write that off. Taking a simple bread roll from her inventory, she bit into the coarse bread, probably made with sawdust or some crap, and chewed casually. It tastes pretty bad, but considering it literally cost a few coppers from any Inn, it wasn't surprising.

With agile feet, she hopped across several ascending stone pillars, coming to perch atop the highest one and observe the all-encompassing desert surrounding her, bread roll still in hand. For as far as her eyes could see, there was absolutely nothing but sand, sand, and more sand, with the occasional rocky outcropping mixed in, grass tufts waving in the breeze...

"Wait a minute." Taking out a monocle of enhanced viewing, Layla quickly placed the small glass ring over one eye and looked towards the 'grass'. It took some fiddling and swearing in several different languages, mostly Italian, Russian and French but she eventually managed to coax the little object into magnifying her view. What greeted her was a small squad of encroaching greenskinned humanoids. Orcs.

The monsters looked to be wearing pretty rudimentary equipment, leather hide tunics and plates of crudely-hammered armour. Several carried roughly-hewn broadly-bladed swords, two had bows slung across their shoulders, and the last one was holding a crossbow in its hand. They were moving at a pretty slow pace vaguely in her direction, but with their proximity they'd still be upon her in under an hour.

Sat atop a spire of black stone, Layla palmed her chin and observed the group. They seemed to be in the midst of discussing something, occasionally one would make a vague and wide-sweeping gesture across the desert, but in general they were rather contained. Taking another thoughtful bite of her roll, she hummed to herself as she watched the group approach.

She was fairly confident that if, for some weird reason, she was considerably weaker or orcs stronger than before, she could still escape, so she saw no reason to flee the small scouting group. Besides, they seemed to be deliberately approaching the stones her spell had brought to reality, so they might know something useful.

And, at least none of them looked like spellcasters.

* * *

Zan'nen wasn't having a very happy day.

Firstly, somehow, a skeet got into his tent during the night and managed to prick several of his waterskins during its hunt for food before it accidentally woke him up by nicking his leg when it moved around. Unfortunately for the orc, that wasn't the end of his misfortune. Upon being awoken by damage, he jolted up out of bed, holdout dagger in hand, which startled the little desert-dwelling critter, sending it fleeing from his tent and in the process knocking over several items, which included his newest, and more importantly cleanest, set of armour.

Several pieces of leather strappings got skewered on the skeet's spinal spikes, leading the blasted creature to drag his equipment across the sand for a good distance before he cut his losses and threw his dagger at the little blighter, which stabbed both a small hole and a few small cuts into his armour, adding to the puncture holes of the skeet.

Since he had to be up and leaving with the others within the hour, he had neither the time nor resources to thoroughly clean and repair his equipment, so simply had to make do with itchy armour. It didn't help that his partner, Mujihi, would burst out in laughter every few minutes when he thought over Zan'nen and his misfortune. "For the last damn time, either drop it, or make do without any of my alcohol for the next moon-turn." He growled out when Mu almost fell over laughing.

The one meant to be leading the entire party, Utoi, was far too busy watching their path to give a damn. Then, to add the final straw onto the pile, Kirema suddenly piped out from his silence to inform them that a giant pulse of 'toxic' magic was just used about two miles from their current position. How magic could be toxic was beyond him, but since neither he, nor none of the others in the party, could even feel magic, he just accepted the difference with a shrug.

Being the diligent bastard he was, Utoi redirected their party to investigate the region, leaving Zan'nen in the position he was currently in. Thirsty, itchy, tired, irritated, and regretting having ever gotten out of his bedding that morning. He knew that the entire point of a scouting party was to watch out for any changes in the desert and report them back to the Overorc or her shamans so they could deal with it, especially any clearskins who tried to start incursions into their land. Didn't mean he was particularly enjoying his time.

It also didn't stop him from almost falling over when he saw just how the desert had changed. Green veins of something ran along the lengths of thick stone pillars which reached high into the sky. As their group warily approached the region, he heard the two rangers of their party unslung their bows and nock arrows, whilst their arbalist laid a quarrel into his crossbow. Drawing his own blade from its bound-leather Frog, he eyed the pillars with suspicion. Despite wanting nothing more than to just get the hell away from whatever the hell was going on, Utoi directed them onwards, approaching the blackstone with wide eyes and readied weapons.

Whatever they expected...they definitely didn't get.

"Hello!" A loud voice called to the group from above, most weapons immediately turned upwards whilst the rest remained wary of ambushes or misdirections. A head peeked around from the very top of the stone, twinned black ears twitching atop similarly-raven hair. Crimson eyes widely took the group in with curious but wary staring as the wind ruffled the white fur wrapped around her throat. "Uhh, sorry." She said in a far quieter voice, taking in the almost scared visage the group had given off. "Hi."

A few silent and awkward moments passed before Utoi gestured towards the stone with his blade. "You do this?" He spoke easily, having already decided the girl was not a severe threat to the party. A threat still, owing to the dagger handles visible on either side of her back, but not aggressively dangerous. Following his example, the archers slightly loosened their strings. They were still ready to draw and fire in a moments notice, but they were considerably less threatening.

"Uhh, maybe?" Raising an eyebrow, Utoi crossed his arms over. "Okay yeah I did, I didn't mean to though. It was meant to go away after a few minutes but then it didn't and now it's stuck here and I don't know what to doooo~!" Okay, Zan'nen could see why Utoi decided the girl wasn't a threat. She was way too...free. Way too open to really be very suspicious.

"Young one, you caused...this...this anomaly?" Piping up, Kirema stepped ahead of Utoi, his knowledge of any form of magic granting him seniority over their squad leader in this situation. Being a normal swordsman meant that Zan'nen was nowhere near gaining seniority like that, but since Kirema, unlike Utoi, even knew something about magic, made him the only one capable of discussing it with...whoever they were speaking with. The girl nodded slowly at that, biting her lip slightly.

"Yeah. I did. B-but honest, I don't know why it's still here or why I'm even here. I mean, I was just out messing around with my mana, and then I thought about trying to cast something when it came to mind so I did and then this stuff came along and everything went all black then I just went poof and now I'm...I'm-" The girls eyes teared up near-instantaneously, before her head ducked back around the edge of the stone, muffled sobs audible even from the foot of the stone.

A short glance between Utoi and Kirema happened, before the larger orc huffed once and stepped a few paces away, gesturing with his head for the rest of them to follow him as he walked away from the pillar the Okami-girl was laid atop. "So, what you think about this stuff?" Mujihi gestured at the pillar with his blade, a toothy frown on his lips. "'Cuz I don't like it."

Growling lightly, Utoi dug a hole in the ground with his own blade. "We'll see what Kirema decides. If he says she's reasonable we'll take her back to Balosar and see what the Overorc decides. If he thinks she's lying or malicious, we'll have to deal with her." He glanced about at the stone spires entrapping the area. "Though if she was strong enough to cause something like this, I think we'd need a few more orcs."

A short whistle got their attention, turning in time to watch the girl hop lightly off the edge of her pillar and slide down, using her hands to guide her as she nimbly avoided the sharpest out-croppings. With a final jump, she rolled over Kirema and came to a stop on the sand lightly. When she rose from her crouch with a hesitant smile on her face, the group got their first proper look at her.

She was wearing leather armour and lappets, but bare-foot and not carrying any visible supplies. While it wasn't really evidence, it did lend credence to the idea that she was most definitely not in the middle of the desert an hour ago. Getting this far into the interior of a desert would require considerable amounts of water. She also had seemingly no food, no bedroll, or tent or anything necessary for surviving in the desert, where it went from a blazing hot hellscape to a freezing cold wasteland in the course of a day.

Shaking his head at her little display, Kirema began regrouping with the team of orcs, the girl trailing behind him and idly playing with a braided bit of hair. Swapping out of the common tongue, Kirema and Utoi began discussing something, presumably the girl, in a language they were confident she wouldn't know. From the pinched face she made as she listened to the two orcs converse, that was indeed the case.

Zan'nen allowed himself a few more moments to closely observe the little Okami-girl as she fiddled with her hair and swayed from side to side. She was shorter than all the orcs by a considerable margin, but she didn't seem afraid, just looking about with a wary sense of awe, especially as she looked at the orcs themselves. Well, presumably where she grew up, orcs were always regaled as mindless beasts who did nothing but rape, pillage and murder everything in their paths.

Not that some clans of orcs weren't exactly that stereotype, it just wasn't true for them all. Clan Finkull, for example, were mostly scholarly orcs, who kept track of the scrolls, tomes and other paperwork Balosar generated, inventing anything they fancied. It was their own temporary research agreement with the dwarves which led to the creation of the Pitchers of Endless Water which Balosar used to support its large population in the sparse desert.

Then there were clans like the Blackskin, who loved nothing more than a good fight or fuck. Keeping them firmly pointed at non-sentient races like the goblins that plagued the mountainous regions where the orcs mined the majority of their iron and coal was a full-time job for the Overorc, as those orcs much preferred hunting humans, elves, dwarves, and other races, sometimes even fellow orcs if they had no enemies to battle.

Turning away, Zan'nen held off his smirk as well as he could when he saw that the Okami was still looking just as awed as before.

* * *

Orcs. Were. Awesome!

They really were. At first, Layla was quite worried when she saw that team of orcs charging straight towards her little magic experiment. Deciding she'd just wait and ambush them if they were hostile, she hid atop one of the taller pillars and waited. When, by pure chance, they ended up stopping directly beneath her pillar, she decided to risk it for a biscuit and poked her head out for a hello.

Having two bows and a crossbow aimed at her face was pretty nerve-racking, but she persevered, even when she wanted to just run away from the danger. She needed information, and the easiest way to do that? Stick close to the truth. She really was just practising with her mana, she did just arrive there in a flash of darkness, and she honestly didn't know why the pillars weren't disappearing.

At no point did she outright lie to the group, though it was close. When the rest of the orcs, including those ones who were holding ranged weapons, were moved away, she felt far more confident. Sure, they were still easily in range, but they weren't all staring at her. Talking one-on-one with a single orc was way easier. After a little back and forth he asked if she'd like to come to their city and try to get this mess sorted out.

She jumped on that offer pretty damn quickly. If the orcs were mostly like the scouting party, which Kirema, as he told her his name was, assured her, then she could maybe figure out just what the fuck happened to put her there. What was most amusing though was when the two orcs began to speak to each other.

They guessed she couldn't understand, and they were right to a degree. But the language they were using was one she remembered from an old game, so it ended up being that several words were recognizable. Not that they meant anything to her, they were more discussing what sounded like supplies and things, so presumably their city or town or whatever wasn't just over a couple of dunes.

When the two broke off and Kirema approached her, she put a smile on, doing her best to keep ignoring the orcs who were still staring at her. "Alright lass, here's the deal. No funny business, or trying ta' use magic or anything or the sort. We'll be making for Balosar, and with where we're at, it'll take us at least a week of travel, since we don't have any beasts a' burden to carry us along."

"Uhh, I could try and see about conjuring something up to carry us there?" The orc eyed her suspiciously, quirking his jaw before waving the other larger orc over.

The two orcs conversed for another few minutes, leaving Layla to kick at the sand in boredom, pondering about a bit whilst staying within easy hearing range. "Alright girl, if you've got some trick you can use for that, give it a shot over there." Kirema pointed towards a small dune of sand a few dozen paces away. "Just make sure that whatever you do doesn't come too close to the boys, they might get antsy."

Nodding amicably, Layla skipped over to the designated spot, her mind running through ideas. Just trying to pull forth something like an Imp would be a waste, they were too small. A primal elemental was way too big and dangerous. Death Knights were far too heavily-armed for the orcs to be comfortable around one. Then she had to think of something within those bounds which she actually knew the incantation for.

Racking her brain, she finally stuck her hand out, sticking with the familiar Fell energy. Kirema told her that he detected whatever the hell she did when casting Fell Storm, so sticking in one 'school' of magic seemed the smartest option. "Eldritch Warp, imbue a hallowed wolf with your manifestation, to follow my whims and rend my foes. Summon Amarok!" A swirling vortex of green fire erupted from the sand, cocooning itself together before disappearing into nothingness.

Stood proudly in the centre of the freshly-made glass the sand had been turned into was a large auburn wolf, easily taller than Layla in height and just as wide. Amber eyes gazed out suspiciously towards the orcs before settling down slightly on Layla. A moment passed before the wolf loped forward, skidding to a stop in front of Layla's feet and immediately setting to work trying to nuzzle her.

"Awh, hello to you as well." Admittedly, summoning a giant wolf was probably not a good idea for a girl who had a massive and irrational love for all things fluffy and cute. But, that didn't stop her from returning the gesture. Turning around, she caressed the chin of the wolf as it rested its head on her shoulder, allowing her to press her face against the fur around its throat. The orcs were in various states of surprise, awe and a little bit of fear. "Oh don't worry, according to legend an Amarok is only dangerous to the enemies of their summoners...as well as any person foolish enough to hunt at night."

Tilting her head, she brushed her ears against the wolf, smirking. "Don't know if I'd put any weight into that rumor though, since I've never had problems asking wolves to aid me, but probably best to be safe rather than sorry." A few moments passed before Kirema stepped forwards. "Besides, not much to hunt out in a desert now is there?"

"So, it's harmless lass?" Nodding, she waved one hand towards herself, beckoning the orc forwards. When he came to a stop a few paces away, she tugged the giant wolf forwards with her, reaching out for Kirema's massive hand and laying it atop the snout of the furred beauty. "Oh...my ancestors will never believe this." The orc murmured, running his hand across the sleek fur of the wolf.

Giggling slightly, she nodded. "Petting a giant mythological wolf. Probably not what you imagined waking up this morning huh?" She smirked to herself at the double meaning there. "Favored one, we need to get across this desert, and we have no way faster than with you and your pack." The wolf turned its wide and wary eyes away from the cluster of orcs to peer at her face, whining softly. "Yes, you'll have some meat waiting for you. Right?"

She turned her gaze towards Kirema, who in turn looked towards the leader of the orcs. Eventually, the big orc huffed and turned away. "That means yes, there'll be meat for your wolf...wolves rather, waiting." Kirema clarified.

"Cool." She chirped, petting the Amarok's head a final time before stepping aside and repeating the incantation, which summoned another wolf with similarly-toned fur. She repeated this several times, summoning enough wolves for each orc to ride atop one, then approached the first she summoned and hopped up to sit astride the wolf, before leaning down to caress the ears on its head.

"Thank you." She murmured softly, earning a pleased rumble from the wolf.

* * *

The group made strong headway thanks to the assistance of the giant wolves, turning a week-long journey into a single full-day ride.

Many of the orcs actually tied themselves atop the large lupine summons to sleep through the journey, catching up on their missed hours of rest. Testing her endurance, Layla spent several hours running alongside the lead wolf, which she decided to name Lupin, just for kicks. At no point during the full-tilt running did she feel even vaguely tired, nor particularly pressed in terms of sheer speed.

Considering the fact that before she was a character built for endurance, strength and speed, it wasn't surprising that a bunch of level 25-30 summons didn't even mildly fatigue her. But, while it wasn't surprising, it definitely hammered home the fact that she was most certainly not in Kansas any more. She tried, every hour or so, to open her chat menu or the log out screen, and after a dozen attempts over the course of half a day, decided that this was probably not the game just being really screwy. By now her headset should have detected the length of her play-session and forcibly disconnected her, a safety feature added to ensure that consumers wouldn't die of thirst or starvation.

Between that, the way the orcs reacted to her completely unlike any NPC, even scripted ones, and the myriad of other things, she began to harbor the inkling of an idea that perhaps, she was actually and genuinely contained within the game. Or at least, something similar. She didn't recognize the look of any of the orcs from Yggdrasil, but the fact she was hyper-fast and able to run for hours on end without a break told her that she was definitely as tough as her original character, at least for running.

Slipping a hand into the pelage on Lupin's back, Layla hoisted herself up onto him in a single smooth motion. it wasn't that she needed a break, she just didn't want to be too obvious about her physical abilities. Sure, running for as long as she had was strange, but none of the orcs had really looked at her in confusion or suspicion...beyond what was normal at least. So far, all she'd displayed was an aptitude for some magic, she could run a long distance, and was strong enough to hoist herself onto a moving wolf taller than she was without much effort.

Sure, it was beyond what a normal person could do, but since she could easily explain it away by the fact she wasn't human, she wasn't particularly worried. "Ahh, there it is, Balosar." Kirema's voice drew her attention, and his outstretched arm pointed towards what at first glance looked like a simply massive sand dune. Blinking in confusion, she opened her mouth to ask where it was, but snapped her jaw shut again when the dune fell aside slowly, revealing the city itself.

The largest building, and the first to be visible, was a massive blackstone tower, reaching high into the sky, with stone pillars on each corner and what looked like massive red crystals positioned at equidistant points around and up the tower. When she asked about them, Kirema told her that they were something one of the shamans from centuries past came up with, as the tower had a habit of collapsing under its own weight as more and more material was added.

"Before the current scouting system was put in place, the tower was used to keep an eye out for anything dangerous trying to approach the city. Since it needed to be able to see long distances, the old orcs just kept making the tower taller, since they were, to put it lightly, slightly stupid. With the introduction of the Finkull clan, however, things like physics and architecture were introduced, leading to...well...the way the city is built now." Kirema spoke with an audibly proud voice, evidently, he loved his city like any other.

Beneath the massive tower were a myriad of buildings, made of mostly sandstone, though there were other kinds of stone as well as wood, hide, and all manner of other materials. All of the buildings, however, were built without hard rooftops. They were all sloped, or domed in some fashion, presumably to stop sand from building up atop them and collapsing them. Off on the far side, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of tall smoke columns climbing into the sky, merging together into one huge pillar.

Ringing the entire city was a grand stone wall, towers interspersed at even intervals with arrow slits and murderholes beneath them. She could see the heads of numerous orcs patrolling the wall, several observing the oncoming group. There were a few gates visible, large doors made of iron or some such metal open and guarded by at least a handful of troops.

Idly, she tugged her cuirass more firmly into place and checked her daggers. She'd long-since hidden her flintlocks away in her inventory, before the orc party had even arrived at her location. Such weapons would most definitely have attracted a fair bit of scrutiny. As it was, her daggers weren't really looked at all too closely. They were pretty ornate, but since she didn't make a fuss about them, the orcs seemed fine enough to leave them on her for protection.

It was nary a minute later that a patrol of orcs hustled out of the nearest gate towards the incoming scouts, all clad in heavy armour and wielding spears. There was a robed one with them, their face obscured and carrying a large stave of wood, presumably a magic caster of some kind. Utoi beckoned his mount forwards to meet them, one palm raised in greeting with the other firmly fisted in the fur of the wolf he was riding.

Unfortunately Layla was too far back to make out any of what they were saying, as they spoke in hushed tones. Even her lupine ears weren't able to make anything out. All the while the hastily-dubbed mage of the group spent their time facing firmly towards Layla, their stave held in front of them at the ready. Deciding that antagonizing the orc was probably not for the best, she settled on a small wave and a smile before turning away to speak more with Kirema, who was all too happy to chat about his city.

Nothing dangerous of course, like where guard barracks were located, or anything even remotely specific, but more about the history of the city, his own family, to which Layla promised that if she could, she'd come and see his little one at some point. They got to discussing about what the smokestacks were, which as it turned out was a cluster of hundreds of forges in the industrial quarter, before the robed orc came forth and addressed her.

"Okami girl, Captain Utoi has spoken in your defence. Thus, I feel it prudent to inform you that your 'spell' was not just detected by Captain Utoi's squadmember, but also by the shamans within the city itself. While it is understandable that you may not have known, I must request you to refrain from using magic of that kind within the vicinity of Balosar." Nodding quickly, Layla then frowned.

"Right, so Fell Storm was like a giant beacon, but what about when I summoned these Amarok wolves?" Layla saw the robed orc take a step back and look at the wolf she was sat stride more closely before tilting his head to look forwards Kirema, then walking closer and whispering to him.

Said orc smirked and nodded at the robed one, who turned back sharply. "I did not detect any other magic used, and the shaman initiate here has vouched for the undetectability of such magic. Though, I hope I do not have to tell you to exercise common sense when casting such magic, especially in public places. All that we await now is the approval of the lieutenant-guardsman over yonder and we can see about having you admitted into our city for an audience with the Overorc."

Smiling, Layla tipped her body downwards. "Well, thanks for your, uhh...hospitality I guess? I'm sorry, I kinda never left our enclave, so I don't really know how to address people, uhh...your shamany-ness?" She quickly flicked her gaze towards Kirema. "Help please." She hissed at the chuckling orc.

"Ahh, my apologies. I am Kinori, elder shaman. As mentioned, your conversational partner there is a shaman initiate. If you are unsure on how to address an orc, simply say so. Many orcs far prefer the direct route. Simply saying you do not know something is not a sign of shame or weakness. Though,-" He leaned in conspiratorially. "-I would advise not saying such to a Blackskin orc, they tend to be rather...blunt." A loud bellow of laughter shouted out from the other side of Lupin, where Zan'nen was sat.

"Rather blunt, that's a good one Kinori. Easiest to say they'd take it as an insult if you don't get into at least one fight with them on your first week in the city. You can think of the Finkull clan as the smartest orcs, the Blackskin as the toughest, and all the other clans are somewhere between the two. Then you have clans like the Guzen, who produce many great smiths. Any orc who wishes is are regarded as simply a part of the clan they most resemble. Orcs, well, we have no time for stupid things like who your seed and egg sires were or are."

Humming, Layla nodded once to herself. "That sounds pretty simple to me. And I guess I'll just have to find a Blackskin to tempt. Though, I dunno whether I'll actually win, I can put up a bloody good fight at least." She said confidently. She was, after all, fairly certain that she'd be able to, if she cut loose, flatten an orc with her pinky finger, but then she'd be seen as abnormal, not a good thing in the centre of the orc capital.

It was then that a funny sound caught her ears. A faint, almost buzzing sound. Furrowing her eyebrows, she closed her eyes and listened closely, trying to pick out the noise amidst the low-level chatter of the group. Unable to place it, her first warning that something was wrong was actually akin to a 6th sense, the hair on the back of her neck tingling sharply. Not recognizing the feeling, she simply continued to listen, sat in place atop her summon.

A moment later, a heavy object thudded against her side, coming down from an angle and knocking her straight off Lupin's back. Her eyes snapped open to see an arrow lodged in the leather of her pauldron. Silently praising how tough Terravore hide was, Layla immediately focused towards the direction the arrow came from, spotting nothing but sand.

All around her, the orcs were running about, some charging in the direction of the arrow, others staying a wary distance from Layla but not moving far, with their weapons ready and eyes sharp. With a yank, the arrow came out of the leather easily, the small hole closing up near-instantly on its own thanks to the properties of the hide. Observing the shot revealed very little, it was a standard wooden arrow with a bodkin steel head and feathered fletching.

Tossing the object off to the side, she turned to look at Utoi with a frown. Said orc took one look at her and growled, then waved his hand in assent. Taking that as all the confirmation she needed, she swung straight back onto Lupin and bid him towards the enemy.

Whoever just shot an arrow at her was about to have a very bad day.

* * *

Captain Halfloch was a good man.

He paid his taxes rightly to his lord. He took good care of the men under his command. He never struck his wife, nor raised his voice unjustly towards her. He always made time for his young son. And yet, in the eyes of an orc, that man would be nothing but pure evil. He attacked their scouts without provocation. He butchered those who were injured on the field of battle. He was an enemy soldier, plain and simple.

When his scouts reported a small squad of orc wolf-riders, he at first knew not what to make of that. He knew some of the more ruthless orcs in the mountains to the north of the kingdom used wolves as mounts and battle-pets, but the desert-dwelling orcs had never been seen with wolves before. The scouts then revealed that there was a girl with them, clad in leather armour and who had wolf ears atop her head.

Those same scouts then revealed that the sergeant in command of the group had decided that eliminating her before she reached the safety of Balosar was far too important, and so he ordered his best marksman to hit her with a shot from his longbow. The group remained only long enough to ensure that she was struck properly, and the hit was true, even sending her off her wolf entirely.

Of course, telling him this was presumably meant to garner a positive reaction. All it did was infuriate the man. He didn't strike the man, though perhaps he would have preferred that to a week digging latrine trenches. They had such little information on the Okami. Rare fables and tales of humans with wolf appendages. There were, of course, demi-humans with other animal parts, but the Okami were especially rare. Renowned as great fighters, on par with even landed mercenaries or Praetorian Knights. Nobody knew the full extent of their strength, and for one of them to be seen in the company of orcs, even going so far as to request of their far more lupine family to be ridden by orcs, was unheard of.

And his sergeant had just shot what could probably even be on the level of a princess of the Okami, if her control over a full pack of wolves was anything to go by. "Captain!" Closing his eyes, he gave himself a mere moment before turning to look upon a panicked soldier. "A battalion-sized unit of Orc city-guard in full plate have been sighted marching on our position, they'll be upon us in a matter of minutes. They...they have war-horse sized wolves with them sir, roughly one to every twenty orcs." Breathing deeply, Halfloch glanced over his map, grit his teeth and left the tent.

All around the small encampment of scouts, men were going about their business, unaware of the orcs bearing down upon them. Walking to the camp perimeter, he gestured to the nearest scout and borrowed his spyglass, extending the tool and looking across the sand. It irked him how fully-armoured orcs could get so close without his scouts noticing, but that didn't matter now.

Sweeping his gaze across the orcs, he caught sight of a singular head of black hair, the white skin as well contrasting against the green skin of the orcs. "Great,-" He muttered to himself. "She wasn't alone." In his mind, it was obvious that the one they'd attacked had either been killed, or was now within the city. It didn't occur to him that she might want to hunt down whoever shot her personally, and that the shot didn't actually injure her at all. To be fair though, a normal leather pauldron would have been cut clean through by such a shot.

Collapsing the lense, he handed the item back to the scout and strode back into camp, clearing his throat. "Men!" He waited a moment for all the men to stop what they were doing. "We have a battalion of orcs bearing down upon us. However!" He firmly yelled, stopping the panic before it could begin. "There is what appears even to my own eyes an Okami with them, alongside at least a platoon's worth of large wolves."

"I need at least three dozen volunteers to aid me in buying the rest of us time to retreat back to the city. I won't lie to you all, this will be a suicide mission. But, if we can hold the perfidious orcs back for long enough to allow the company flight back to the city, we can warn the kingdom about the presence of an Okami within the orc city. Whose with me?!"

A large group of the men burst into loud cheers, to which Halfloch and his sergeants quickly sectioned off a sizable portion of men, whilst the rest gathered up camp and set off swiftly away from the enemy. Grabbing up his helmet from the loop on his hip, he thrust it atop his head, checking his sword and buckler over once whilst his men organized themselves.

Before leaving, he rubbed a thumb against the ring on his finger, quietly murmuring a final prayer for his beloved wife and son.

* * *

"We've got incoming Kingdom scouts!"

Blinking, Layla snapped her gaze off of the weirdly-shaped rocks in the distance to look forwards, where several columns of scouts were marching forwards, swords drawn. Many carried bows in their hands, and at a faintly-audible signal they nocked arrows. "Let's get these fucks then!" Layla yelled, willing all her Amarok wolves to charge at the enemy.

The summons were all a higher level than any soldier of the scouts, and it showed, the arrows simply brushing across their pelts without piercing. The orcs who were charging in organized squads had similar luck, their heavy plate armour turning aside near all arrows fired at them, only a rare orc taking a hit in a weak point and being wounded. From atop Lupin, Layla drew her daggers, a feral grin on her lips as she leapt into the air.

For a moment, she could see the entire unit of scouts spread out beneath her, and bit her lip a small amount at the thought of actually killing, before gravity drew her from her flight and pulled her down into the men, washing away everything but the battle. Twirling, her daggers lashed out as she hit the sand, cutting bloody rents down the bodies of two men in an instant. Bounding up using her hands, she avoided the reprisal attack of swords swinging, her teeth visible as she snarled.

As she was doing this, the first of the wolves crashed into the infantry, their weight, speed and durability likening them to shock cavalry, breaking any kind of defensive line the men attempted to initiate and thundering deeply into their lines, throwing the soldiers into disarray and leaving wide rents for the slower and heavier orc troops to flow in like a swarm.

Using the outstretched blades as a very temporary platform, she propelled herself straight across the heads of the scout troops, whirling her daggers into faces and deflecting blows. Coming to a sudden stop with her feet atop a set of shoulders, she clacked her feet together and twisted harshly, snapping his neck and rolling forwards, using her body weight to throw the corpse at his fellows.

The improvised projectile gave Layla a moment to wipe the blood from her face, spitting out the copper taste of blood, her grin never fading. Were she in a calmer state of mind, she would have realized that one of her racial abilities, blood frenzy, had activated. As it was, she was too caught up in the fight to notice. With dexterous hands she flung her left hand dagger out, immediately and instinctively filling her hand with a flintlock and firing it.

The muffled gunshot of the modified weapon was near-completely covered by the sound of battle, the only one other than herself to realize that Layla had performed an attack in that moment was the one now sporting a bloody hole in his chestpiece, the minie ball piercing his lungs through. Dropping the empty weapon, Layla drew another, her mind idly tracking the location of her dagger as it finished its flight by burying itself into the eye socket of a scout who moved too slowly to avoid the weapon.

Cartwheeling away from a two-handed swing, she planted her foot on the dagger and tugged it out by the guard, then surprised her opponent by using her foot to kick the weapon towards him. He brought his weapon up to deflect the dagger, but in the time it took him to do that, the flintlock in hand was fired, blasting his heart out and injuring a scout behind him with the fragmented shards, the shot having broken on his backplate into fragmentation.

Taking a single moment to take her breath in, Layla observed the fight. The scouts were honestly holding their own quite well against the orcs. Against the Amarok summons though...not a single summon had died. Several were lightly injured but still fighting just fine. On the other hand, at least a dozen scouts had been torn into pieces by the wolves, which was seriously demoralizing for the soldiers, as well as bolstering for the orcs.

Spotting a more ornate helmet, Layla leapt onto the shoulders of a nearby Amarok, looking over the heads of men and orc to see a more ornately-equipped man doing battle with an orc. Observing the fight for a few moments showed a far finer skill-set, so Layla presumed he was either high-ranking, or possibly the actual leader of the unit. Petting the wolf once between the ears for being so useful, she leapt towards her fallen dagger, scooping it up before dodging another attack.

Idly hamstringing the soldier, she left him screaming as the Amarok she had used for height ripped his throat out, ignoring the dying gurgle of blood and air as she pushed through the battle, avoiding orc and human swings with ease, swiping her dagger through the throats of several distracted men.

Halfloch was busily fending off a surprisingly lithe and skillful orc when a dagger found itself buried in his off-hand. Turning and waving his sword to fend off his new attacker, he was surprised when an Okami stood before him, one hand playing with her other dagger. "He's mine." The girl claimed, staring directly into his eyes with red-tinted pupils. The orc he was fighting seemed ready to protest, then thought better of it when a wolf came to look over her shoulder. "So, you thought you could just shoot me with an arrow for no fucking reason huh?"

Ripping the dagger from his hand, Halfloch slipped it into the leather around his waist, glaring at Layla. "You were cavorting with blasted greenskin scum and giving them battle-mounts. While I don't agree with the decision my sergeant made, after watching you battle, it's clear that living with the scum of the desert is where you deserve to be." He spat to the side, flexing his hand and grimacing.

Growling lowly in her throat, Layla pulled another dagger to hand, ignoring the momentary widening of the mans eyes at the magical action as she lunged forwards, swiping her right hand forwards whilst her other sought his unprotected flank, scoring a line across his leather armour. The injury to his hand coupled with his relatively heavy weapon meant the man couldn't defend two places at once, so settled for attempting to kick her away before she could truly break into his guard.

Dropping her left-hand dagger into nothingness, she planted a hand on his knee as he swung, using his own leg momentum to flip over his head and plunge her remaining weapon into his shoulder as she passed over him, rolling around to face his back and riding him like a jockey, using the dagger as a fulcrum whilst simultaneously demolishing his shoulder. A strangled cry of pain wrenched from his lips as he flailed his left arm, attempting to grab Layla and throw her aside, or at least hit her with his buckler.

With a cocky smirk, she hoisted herself up into the air above him with a hard push of her arms against his shoulders, then brought herself down hard with one foot on the hilt of her knife, driving the weapon down using her weight, before planting her other foot against his back and forcing him down thanks to her weight and momentum. As he landed on the ground, she pulled another dagger and unceremoniously plunged it through the back of his throat.

His dying throes were bloody and violent, attempting to do anything to at least injure Layla, scrabbling at the sand for purchase before weakening and going limp, dead, her hand firmly gripping the knife in his neck. "Next time, don't try to fucking murder me. Prick." She plucked her dagger from the dead mans throat, dropping both bloodied weapons into her inventory as to not push blood into her sheaths. Taking a look around, it was clear the sudden and brutal death of their leader had sent the men into disarray, leaving them easy pickings for the well-trained orcs.

As the battle winded down, she mentally ordered all the Amarok wolves to gather in a group so she could see how much damage they'd taken. Only one had 'died', and looking over she could see that the wolf had been damn well decapitated by something. Frowning, she looked over the rest of the wolves, some having minor battle injuries but nothing major. While they were a higher level than the scouts they just fought, there was certainly something to be said that aside from what was presumably a lucky hit, none were heavily injured. "Lupin!"

At her audible call, the designated wolf came forth. He was slightly scuffed up, a few tiny cuts here and there, though nothing really dangerous. Giving him a quick rub between the ears, she looked him over once more before sliding to the side and hopping up onto his back. From her raised position, she then turned her focus to the orc host which had come with her after the scouts. She didn't know how many there were, so couldn't count the losses they took, but they were heavy infantry and against an outnumbered opponent, so they likely only took minuscule losses, especially considering how quickly Layla slew their commander.

"'at was a right good show lass." One of the armoured orcs came right up to Lupin, his visor still down and weapon half-cleaned of blood. "Though, I ain't never seen trickery like tose' knives ya used. Ammost looked to be disappearin' at yer will." Even behind his dark visor, Layla knew she was being stared at with scrutiny.

With a grin, she opened her palm towards him, pulling a knife from her inventory and catching it instantly, much to the surprise of the orc. "Yeah, these are really, REALLY special daggers. I can't remember exactly what my papa said about them, but it was something to do with being bonded or something." Shrugging, she made the blade disappear again with casual ease, as though she'd been doing it her whole life. "I guess considering how special they are where I'm from, that makes them even more rare out here?"

The orc shook his head, chuffling loudly. "Rare? Lass, you'd be 'aving the Finkull camping out your door afore you could even blink if they thought there was a chance to get ya to let 'em look those over." He shook his head again, laughing a little quieter. "Really now, rare?" He tipped his visor up to peer out, wiping a small trickle of sweat away from his eyes.

"So, I gotta ask. How in the hell can you guys stand wearing...THAT! In the middle of the bloody desert as well. I'm pretty toasty right now, and I'm wearing a goddamn cuirass and skirt!" The orc, who Layla could see was a green skinned orc, not a blackskin, shrugged.

"I don't know what to tell you about that. Maybe just something 'bout orcs, 'cus any orc can put this sort of gear on and march into the desert if needs be. Ain't comfortable, which is why the scouts prefer leathers, as well as being lighter, but for guarding the city, it's worth it." He jabbed a thumb against his chestplate with force, drawing a ring from the metal. "'ard as the finest ebony, light as standard steel, and every one of us has a suit of the damn stuff. Can't say more than that though, 'specially about how we get the metal for it, orc secret you understand?"

Nodding idly, Layla looked over the armour in more detail, taking in all the little niches with a keen eye. It was definitely well-made stuff none the less. "Well, I shall have to pay a visit to the...Guzen clan I think it was?" The orc nodded his assent. "Yeah, the Guzen. Sounds like my kinda people! Well, them and the Blackskin. Ohh, but I wanna talk with everyone now!" Throwing her arms up dramatically, she rolled to lay against Lupin's back, resolutely ignoring the orcs laughter. "Hey, I never got your name?" She posed the statement as a question, rolling to the side slightly to peer at the orc.

"Bah, you'll be hearing of me soon enough, 'specially if you be meeting with the Overorc." The greenskin then snapped his visor closed again, wandering off with a wave over his shoulder, though he did stop to swipe the rest of his blade clean on the tabard of the man she killed. Humming, Layla rolled back to look straight up. She killed at least...15 men by her own rough estimation. And yet, she didn't feel even vaguely horrified by her actions. Sure, she was probably having some cognitive dissonance and still seeing her reality as a game, despite the fact that she could taste the copper of blood in her mouth, smell the scent of flesh and blood around her, even hear a few light dying groans amidst the racket the orcs were making, but she expected to feel at least...something.

Pushing her palm into the sky, she pushed those worries away, instead thinking on what was going to come when she actually bloody well arrived in Balosar.

* * *

"Right, hopefully we can do this without an arrow this time."

Snorting, Kirema shook his head. "We can only hope lass." The group of guardsmen made their way back to the city in good time, several parties of orc scouts probing outwards in a wide screen to make sure they didn't come under attack a second time. When asked about that, the shaman initiate responded with a shrug. "Kingdom soldiers being within arrow distance 'a the front gate?" He spat to the side. "That'll rustle the Overorc something fierce. Might even organize a raiding party so the King don't get too big for 'is britches. 'Asides, they attacked ya, an' I doubt the Overorc'll be 'appy to hear about that, seeing as you're friendly and aiding us."

With a thoughtful noise, Layla returned her focus to the looming city. A gate was already wide and admitting the very front of the column, whilst Layla and Kirema were riding atop Amarok's near the centre of the formation. As they passed closer and closer to the gate, she took in the defence with a keener eye. Not that she was really one for designing city defences, but seeing the vertical murder-holes directly above the gate, where orcs stared down between the gaps at the troops entering the city, alongside divots for oil or other defensive liquids to be spewed, was definitely a worthy sight.

"So, what, those scouts managed to get through the entire desert without being detected? Well, then again, considering how long it took us to get here even on Amarok mounts, I guess it's fine, since you'd need a magnitude more people to actually patrol the entire desert." A curt nod was Kirema's response, whilst a few of the orcs around her grumbled about the 'blasted humans'.

Passing underneath the portcullis, Layla got her first glimpse of orc civilians. They were mostly clad in cotton clothing, roughspun tunics and leggings, though more than 90% of those visible were barefoot, matching Layla's own feet. As the only different species, Layla drew more than a few sets of eyes, though she happily noted that they were mostly just curious and wary, but not outright suspicious looks or, worse, glares.

Raising a hand to wave, with a grin on her face, served to remind several that they were staring rather bluntly, or perhaps had other more important things to do. "Oh put yer 'and down lass, ignore all the muckrakers!" He jeered over the crowd, a grin on his lips matching her own, clearly intending the words as a mere jest, not truly harsh. "Ahh, right. Overorc. Okay lass, 'ere's the deal. Overorc is gonna want to meet ya, 'at's a given. She'll prob'ly want ya as soon as ya can be arsed to drag yourself up to 'er tower, so if yer up fer it, I'd get that outta the way fast as ya can."

Nodding in agreement, she tipped her head to look towards the tower. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather just deal with this and then go take a map, it's been a bloody long day." Laughing, Kirema thumped her on the back twice.

"You'll be right, don't worry 'bout that. Jes' don't do anything to be a serious nuisance and you'll be fine. She'll want ta know where ya came from, what happened, why yer 'ere, stuff like that. Keep it right and simple and you'll come out of there without a scratch on ye." With a smirk, she cricked her hands out, snapping her fingers with a yawn.

"'ope so. I want a nap already.

* * *

Meeting the Overorc was a pretty standard affair.

By standard, she ended up having a spar with the comparatively gigantic orc within the first five minutes of meeting her. She didn't plan that, honestly. She just wanted to have the day over and done with. Unfortunately, one of the guardsmen who were with the assault let slip to the Overorc as to Layla's skills with her daggers, and that then lead the massive orc woman to want for a good fight.

Thus, she was now darting around the small arena, avoiding the two-handed battleaxe swinging for her face by leaning backwards before kicking off the ground using one hand and swinging her dagger towards the orcs face. Bringing her second axe to bear, because of course the giant orc wielded a pair of two-handed axes, Layla found her dagger parried with bone-snapping force.

Baring her teeth in a wide grin, she twisted her dagger to catch the axe blade in the serrations of her weapon, letting herself be thrown along with the swing of the weapon. A loud thumming sound cracked the air as the orc, matching Layla's challenge, swung her blade as fast as she could, sending the wolf-girl flying towards a wall. Landing feet-first, she bent her legs down to the point she was basically sitting on the wall on her ankles, before forcing her feet downwards, rebounding with enough force to crack the stone of the wall as she flew towards her opponent, daggers outstretched.

Unfortunately for the two fighters, that moment was when one of the shamans decided to intervene, casting a spell which slowed the pair down considerably. Layla could, of course, have resisted it with ease, but since she didn't actually want to fight the orc past having a semi-strong opponent in front of her, she just pretended to have been blunted by the magical interference. Her sparring partner, on the other hand, was not as pleased.

"Oh yer gettin' an axe for that one Seldar! What the fuck are ya thinking stopping my fight?" The shaman, non-plussed by the threat, simply pointed towards the wall Layla had bounced off, which now had two large foot indentations, and spiderweb cracks all around it. "Ahh, right. Maybe the tower arena was a bad idea for a fight like this. Uhh, can you-" She waved a hand towards the wall.

With a sigh of longsuffering agitation, the shaman muttered some words and waved his staff, forcing the stone cracks to close up and picking up the fragments which fell, using them to fill the hole Layla's feet made in the wall. "Cheers!" Layla chirped with a wave, receiving a blank stare for a few moments before the shaman gave a minor nod. "So, with that outta the way, can we get to talking about whatever you wanted to see me for?"

The Overorc walked across the arena to the doors, beckoning Layla on as she brushed the two large doors aside with ease and held one open. "Sure. Well, I guess after that fight, introductions are in order, since I have ya at a disadvantage there. I'm sure you know this already, but I'm the Overorc around here. Name's Fubatsu. Now, to be honest I wanted ya brought 'ere because you're a fucking anomaly. According to what the shamans say, that little 'accident' you had with your magic would have been felt all the way to the Kingdom."

Being affixed with a hard look, Layla just rubbed the back of her head. "To be perfectly honest, that spell shouldn't have done...near any of what it actually did. I mean, the stuff I read said that all it's meant to do is slow people down and do a bit of damage, then as the spell-caster gets stronger and uses more mana to cast it, it does more damage and makes people even slower. With what I put into it, it should have fizzled out after five minutes and...I just don't know why it's still there." She answered honestly, evading anything which would make the orc ahead of her suspicious.

"Right." The orc said after a few moments passed. "Well, as I said, that magic would've been detected as far as the Kingdom, so we can unfortunately expect that they'll be sending out scouts into that area to figure out what the hell happened." Grimacing, Layla opened her mouth to apologize, but the Overorc was having none of that, pushing her jaw closed. "Hey, even I can understand it was an accident. Man, if I got called out for all the crap I did accidentally, the entire city would have a problem with me. Though, to be on the safe side, only cast magic after you've talked it over with an elder shaman or higher. Don't want you trying to cast something and accidentally levelling the city now do we?"

Her words were joking, but her voice was stern. Layla quickly nodded. "Yeah, I got the message. Only thing I'll be casting will be the summoning for Amarok wolves, and even then I'll probably only be summoning Lupin." At Fubatsu's raised eyebrow Layla shrugged. "I named one of them." She muttered simply, eliciting a barking laugh from the Overorc.

"Ha! Say, I'm curious now. That isn't the only magic you know, right?" Layla shook her head. "Okay, well, humor me, what's the strongest spell ya know? For the shamans it's probably something akin to Grand Fireball. Or at least, that's what Seldar tells me." Humming, Layla took a moment to actually consider her answer. On one hand she didn't want to give away her abilities.

But, on the other hand, being known to have a single very powerful spell to use in emergencies would be right helpful. "Uhh, if I had to pick a single spell...including the full incantation, it'd be something like Stand of the Reaper. The incantation is seriously long, but if I can actually cast it, I'd be able to beat pretty much anything which entered my area of effect. Within the area of effect for the spell, I'd be able to move faster than your eyes can track, hit harder than a mammoth, and generally...it wouldn't be a fun time. But, as I said, the incantation is a great opening for someone to try and attack me."

Fubatsu stopped for a moment, looking over Layla with a keen eye before smirking. "Hmm, can't say I'd have expected it from ya. Well, we've got a few things to cover, just to settle my curiosity, like where you actually came from, what's your plans, things like that. So, here we are!" Nodding along, Layla waited as the orc opened a set of doors and led her inside, where a large stone desk waited, two chairs with one on either side stood beside the desk. The room wasn't heavily decorated, but that could have just meant this wasn't her actual office.

Settling down on one chair at Fubatsu's request, Layla began to speak.

* * *

"Please never send me to her again!"

Whining slightly, Layla leaned against a wall, Kirema chuckling beside her. After what she could only call a bloody interrogation at the hands of Fubatsu, Layla was deemed to be safe for residence in the city as she tried to figure out how the hell she ended up in the middle of the desert. Since she didn't know the first thing about the city, and he was willing, Kirema was assigned to give her a tour of the places she'd need to know, like the market, the baths, residences, and other such places. "I'm sure it wasn't that bad."

"It was!" Layla gestured with her hands up in the air. "She was like a gossip queen! Gah! I mean, I get it, she wants to make sure Balosar is safe from me and wants to help me get home, but still! I don't like talking about myself during the best of days, and today was not a good fucking day. Bleh, can we just go find an inn, I just want to go to bed after a few drinks and forget today even existed." Tilting her head, she amended. "Well, most of it in any case. Wouldn't do to have to relearn everyone's names!"

Laughing heartily, Kirema waved a hand ahead of himself. "Well, we've only got a few spots you might want to visit and then you can do just that. But first...Kawairashi!" Raising an eyebrow, Layla followed his gaze towards another non-descript house. A moment passed before the door was thrown open and a tiny orc, barely up to even her stomach, came barreling out of the building.

"PAPA!" The little orc yelled as she sprinted across the street, leaping up a few feet away and slamming into Kirema with the force of...well, not that much force actually. Still, the large orc acted suitably afflicted, falling backwards with a laugh on his lips even as he fell to the ground.

"Hello there little 'rashi." Kirema skillfully, speaking of long practice, levered the little girl around so she was sitting on one of his arms as he stood up, her arms firmly locked around his neck as she hugged him for all her little arms could. Biting her lip, it took a considerable amount of self-control for Layla to not immediately coo and pet the little girl. It wasn't her fault, the child was far too cute for life to be fair.

Wide emerald eyes peering out under vibrantly red hair, which framed a healthy cherubic face, Layla took in what was presumably Kirema's daughter and found her...adorable. When Kirema laughed and murmured his agreement, her face lit up like a christmas tree. "I-uh...sorry? She's just so cute!" The subject of her words seemed similarly embarrassed to be complemented by a complete stranger to her, hiding her face in Kirema's neck.

"Hey now Kawairashi, don't be shy, she's a friend." Gently he coaxed the little girl to actually look at the speaker. Layla watched with a grin as her gaze was drawn up above her eyes to her hair, where her two vulpine ears rested. A shine overtook her eyes as Kawairashi stared at the ears atop her head. Dropping her gaze down, the girl muttered something which Layla couldn't even hear. "Aww, come on now 'rashi, I know she can hear well but if I can't even make out what you sai-"

"I-I want to pet them. C-can I?" Layla was about to shrug and dip her head a little, but then the girl raised her gaze, puppy-dog eyes at full charge. With a soft smile, Layla crouched down entirely, placing her new ears low enough that the girl could see and touch them easily from the floor, and nodded towards Kirema, who set the young orc-girl down, watching her carefully with all the care of a father. Immediately she plodded forwards, coming to a stop a step away from Layla and reaching her hand out hesitantly.

Extending her own hand, Layla took the young girls outstretched arm and guided her fingers to the gap between her ears, smirking as her face lit up. "It's okay, just be gentle." She softly re-assured the girl, shuffling her legs so she could kneel down on her legs with her eyes now at neck height to the young orc. She found her eyes drawn to a little braid dangling just behind the girls ear, so while her ears were being fascinating to Kawairashi, she slowly reached towards the braid and drew it from behind her ear to admire it. "Did you do this?" She asked softly of the girl.

The orc-girl shook her head in the negative, still caressing the ever-so-soft fur on Layla's ears. "Mnn, mama did it. Papa always tangles my hair up when he tries. Once, once he got his fingers stuck in his own hair!" The girl excitedly chirped, far more confident now that she was so close. It probably helped that Layla was so gentle, not even slightly tugging her head as she turned her braid over.

Kirema, being called out, just chuckled, walking to the house that the young girl had emerged from and pushing the door open. "Anseen, honey, I'm home!" Layla heard a quiet response, but with Kawairashi jittering on in her ears about meaningless yet still dear moments involving her and her parents, she couldn't make out what the response was.

With a grin, she leaned forwards and cupped one hand beside Kawai's ear. "Psst, you want a piggy-back ride?" The girl looked at her eyes in confusion. "Wait, you don't know what a piggyback ride is?" The girl shook her head emphatically, her eyes shining in excitement. Even if she didn't know what it was, obviously she'd put together that it was something fun.

Lifting Kawairashi gently, Layla planted the girl on her shoulders, directing her to use the top of Layla's head for balance as she held her legs. The girl squealed a little when she took a step, but excitement quickly over-ruled her trepidation as Layla walked around. Soon she was begging Layla to keep carrying her but moving faster! When Layla finally called an end to their fun, finally noticing Kirema leaned against the doorframe with a grin on his face, she knelt down. With a long whine, the girl reluctantly got off, but not before forcing Layla into a promise that she would carry her again.

The instant said promise was attained with the lock of a pinky-promise, another thing the girl didn't know, Layla was partnered with a dust-cloud as the young girl sprinted into her home straight past her father, presumably to tell her mother about her excitement. "What can I say? She's adorable." Kirema, in return, said nothing, his grin telling Layla all she needed to know. A smile on her own lips met his as she stepped up to the door.

Her nose twitched as the scent of roasted meat wafted from within the building. "My wife always makes something with meat when I come back home after patrols." Kirema mentioned with a shrug, still grinning. "If you'd like, you can eat with us? I wanted to ask you something anyways, so why not do it over some good grub?"

"I-" Layla slapped her hands over her mouth to stifle her laughter as her ears twitched. Her hearing was good enough to hear Kawairashi talking with her mother, and she heard the little girl address her as 'Big Sis Neko' despite not listening too closely. "I-uh...if it's not a bother, then sure."

* * *

Pushing the door open, Kirema's eyes softened as he took in the scene before him. He had poked his head into Kawairashi's room to say goodnight to his little one, but her bed was unkempt and she was nowhere to be found. A moment of panic overcame him before his discipline clamped back down hard, and he made his way to the room Layla was borrowing, pushing the door open.

There, laying on the bed, was the Okami-girl. But he could see the crown of red hair under her chin, the form of his daughter visible in the contours of the cover thrown over the pair. With quiet steps, Kirema approached the bed and leaned down to kiss his daughter goodnight, when he noticed that, while thin, Layla's eyes were open, a lazy smile on her lips.

Slowly, she raised a hand to wave in greeting, extremely careful to avoid jostling the girl with her arms wrapped around her mid-riff. "I swear, your daughter is far too adorable to be fair." She murmured quietly, lowering her hand to brush back a strand of red hair over Kawairashi's face. "Anseen must be so proud of her little girl." A grin quirked on her lips as she raised her gaze. "Though I'm worried at how quickly she attached herself to me...does her-does she have many friends?"

Though his lips were still in a smile, it became thinner and more uncomfortable quickly upon Layla's words. "She..." The orc sighed softly. "Layla, you must understand something about orcs. While we have those such as the Finkull who are far more scholarly than most, near all orcs value physical strength over other traits. My beloved and I...we are, as I'm sure you are well aware, not physically strong. I am a shaman, and she has never held a blade larger than a kitchen knife. Our daughter, unfortunately, is seen as our offspring so much so that for two physically weak orcs, they would tell their own children that our daughter is weak, and not worthy to be friends with."

Blinking, Layla looked down at Kawairashi, then up at Kirema, a frown on her face. "So, they judge her because you both are not physical fighters?" Sullenly, Kirema nodded his assent. "That's bul-uhh, that's silly." Even if she were asleep, Layla didn't wish to curse with the young orc resting beside her. "I mean, if you judge me based on that, I look weaker than all of you. But you saw me go head-to-head with the Overorc and come out just fine. And I swear, if any of them treat her like that in front of me, you can't hold me responsible for what I might do."

Emphasizing her point, she patted the crimson red hair beside her delicately, her eyes sharp. "I'm sure you will." Kirema added after a few moments. It was extremely upsetting for the father, forced to watch his daughter be ostracized by those her own age. No matter what words he or his beloved wife imparted, nothing would quite make up the fact that his little girl was friendless amongst her own age group. And, while he was a mite bit concerned with how swiftly his daughter latched onto their newcomer, he knew from spending the day with her that Layla wouldn't willingly hurt her.

It might have been a fast decision to make, but seeing his daughter cuddled up beside her, somehow, inexplicably, he knew that the safest place in the entire world for his little girl was with Layla. And besides, after Layla folded and summoned one of her wolves for her, Kawai, with an adorable look matching her childish visage, shyly asked if she could pet the...'big puppy' and was allowed, it was clear she had at least some level of affinity for the wolves bonded to Layla. The way she gently brushed her hand against the fur, not pulling or hurting the large wolf in a way totally at odds with what would be expected from a young girl her age, and the wolf responding by attempting to groom her.

Even if it only left her hair sticking up, with a disgusted look on Anseen's face as she thought of how annoying washing that stuff out of Kawairashi's hair was going to be, along with the amused faces of Layla and Kirema, then the awed look 'rashi adopted as she hugged the wolf. "Well, since she's in good hands, I'll just say good night." With a gentle kiss to his daughter's forehead and a wave to Layla, he left the room.

Brushing aside Kawairashi's hair once more, Layla finally closed her eyes, her first day of many days in the new world was over.

* * *

**_"Ne-ne, she's here!"_**

A chirping voice, childish and high, yelled loudly from nearby, jolting Layla and making her snap her eyes wide, her gaze flickering around her surroundings. She wasn't in the room she fell asleep in. In fact, she wasn't in any room she recognized. Black pillars were interspaced evenly on the borders of the room, stretching into the inky darkness above her, whilst green veins of familiar Fel energy pulsed and entwined around them.

Layla then took note of the two figures who were in that room with her. One, green-haired and with red flames rising atop her head, was hopping about excitedly and chittering. She had a green and red outfit on, a swashbuckler look with a sash, large buckles and straps, and several empty holsters. She was switching her gaze between Layla and the other occupant frequently, as if they couldn't quite contain themselves.

As if a mirror was in the room, the final occupant was far more composed. A midnight black fascinator was atop her sapphire-blue hair, tilted to the side. She had a masquerade mask of pure white covering her face, with a frock coat in black, matching her headwear. Her hands were covered by white gloves which reached into the sleeves of her frock, and they were clasped behind her as she looked at Layla with an implacable gaze.

"Uhh, hi?" Layla spoke after a few moments, looking between the pair in confusion. "I'm sorry, I have no bloody clue what's going on now, can one of you explain please?" The composed one let their lips drop into a shallow frown, whilst the far more excitable of the pair simply nodded with a grin. However, as they opened up their mouth, the hand of the formally-dressed one snapped out and held their jaw up.

_"Allow me, please."_ They had the voice of a British aristocrat, quite at home with their appearance, smooth and even, with an underlying hint of unfeigned arrogance. What was strange though was that her voice sounded...strange. Like it wasn't quite correct. _"This is, to put in simple terms, at least from what those such as us believe, your mind. As I'm certain you are aware, however, it is only the most reasonable facsimile which can be provided which your own mind would comprehend."_

While the voice could do with less arrogance and snobbiness, Layla ignored that in favor of considering her words. "So, what you're saying is, this is the closest thing my mind could come up with which I'd be able to understand?" The other woman inclined her head slightly, agreeing. "Okay. So, you have me at a disadvantage I believe. I guess it was you who said '_She's here?'. _Layla gazed at the shorter and more excited of the pair.

**_"Yeah yeah, that was me! Uhh, so you might not believe us straight away, since we've never been able to actually do this before but that's okay because this is awesome and we can make up and be friends and do friendy stu-"_ **The taller of the pair swatted her on the top of her head with the heel of her hand, forcibly stopping her tangent.

_"I shall intercede here. I am Noxilous. This ball of irritatingness is Pestuous. I understand that you have renamed us for your convenience, but I must ask you address me in full. However, calling this one 'Pest' certainly fits her attitude."_ Blinking, Layla looked between the pair with surprise written over her face. Noxilous and Pestuous were standing right in front of her, if their words were to be believed.

"Hang on. Just, hold the ball a minute. You two are Noxilous and Pest?" Two nods, one regal and the other frantic, met her statement. "Whatever, today is already rather insane, how about we pile on some extra." The two looked between themselves before stepping forwards.

**_"Well, you did kinda just disappear from your ship and appear in a desert surrounded by sand and orcs, so being confused to suddenly meet us is cool!"_** She punctuated her words with a thumbs up, leaving Layla to snort her amusement. **_"I mean, we both don't get why we can suddenly talk to ya, but it's nice to finally say hello, so...hiya!"_ **She received another swat on the head for her words.

_"While I would not put it quite as crudely, I also believe that speaking with the one who wields us is a...pleasant experience. Might I ask, now that we can, that we may spend some time to converse every so often? It does get rather lonely within this darkness, with only weapons, armor, resources and other random items to look upon."_ Layla blinked.

"Wait, you mean...you guys are aware when you're in my inventory?" The two looked between each other before, once again, nodding. "Damn, that's gotta suck. Okay, well, how about this. If I take you guys out and just keep you hanging from my belt or something, would that be better for you?"

Noxilous hummed softly. _"As something has clearly changed upon your arrival to this desert, mayhaps something more could occur. Whatever the case, I would gladly appreciate being out of this darkness. We can see the world, certainly, but it is a rather lacklustre experience compared to being out there, deflecting blades and empowering our wielder." _Pestuous nodded her agreement.

"Well, why not?"

* * *

**I'm so happy right now.**

**Some absolutely wonderful person, I don't know who, tried to donate $5.00 to me on pat reon. It was declined because I didn't set it up properly and forgot about it, but...to be honest, it really, truly and honestly is the thought that counts. If you read this, whoever you are...just know that I'm truly grateful that you enjoyed my story enough to try and support me.**


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